I have had Just Cause sitting in a variety of places for a while - in the PS2 games box in the loft, in my Steam library on my PC, and on my Xbox 360 shelves - but despite the fact that I've heard it to be great fun and the sequel is an amazing sandbox experience, I've never played it. Until now.

I decided to play the PS2 version, since my PS3 (which is backwards-compatible) was set up and my 360 wasn't (due to the Wii being plugged in to the component inputs for Luigi's Mansion; yes, it's complicated). The opening cinematics looked pretty awful, but once I got control of my character I was quite impressed by the scale of the game and its vision. Parachuting down to the island was a pretty spectacular start, and once I transitioned into running along the beach and stealing a car, I could see that there were clear open-world GTA influences at play.

Unfortunately, the PS2 was a bit underpowered for such a grand vision. The framerate was, at times, awful - to the extent that I actually had to run away and stand still for the console to catch up. This was not helped by the controls which were not nearly customisable enough, and felt very imprecise.

That's not to say I didn't have fun. After a while I was given a grappling hook, with which I could grab onto cars and paraglide behind them. That was good fun for a while, and useful on a mission where I had to destroy a car and take the place of the now-dead dignitary. The main issue with the game was a lack of a sense of urgency; you are going to kill a dictator and free the island, sure, but there was little spurring you on to do this, and the game was almost too non-linear with no clear sense of direction.

If I go back to it it would be on the 360, but I may skip to the sequel.

I even remember writing about this on my blog. I'll paste some text from the previous post:

Ico starts off slowly, with a long cutscene. You get thrown into a murky world and have to work out the controls. The world's not actually murky, but playing it on my HD TV certainly made it look so. I worked my way through the castle, until I found the girl in white. I knocked the cage down the tower, and rescued her from the shadow monsters. I then couldn't find a way out of the room. Huh.

Never mind, I thought, I'll come back to that later. I'd been playing for 40 minutes or so. I turned the console off, and then thought ... hmm, I wonder if the game does save at checkpoints?

Evidently not.

Ikaruga (GameCube) I have only ever played this for five minutes, and it made my head hurt.

After competing 999 picross puzzles, there was one left. Surely the pinnacle of difficulty, it's surely going to be a trophy or medal or something special. Oh no, it's really easy and it's a pie chart. A bloody pie chart.

Both games have many highlights, but the thing I will remember most is the mission in which you are sent into battle against the massive walking fortress. I destroyed more of the city than the fortress did while trying to attack it, and finally the mission ends with you withdrawing because your weapons aren't powerful enough. Sorry I broke the Space Needle for nothing, guys.

Exit (PSP)

One of the characters you have to rescue is very fat. I called him Fatty. I pushed boxes onto him. He died.

Ecolibrium (PS Vita)

Playing on the train, on the tutorial. And then the game requires me to look around 180 degrees with my Vita to see the animals behind me. Not going to happen; never loaded up again.

Endless Ocean (Wii)

I recently went back to this as part of the "Au Revoir Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection" drive, which was pointless as the only online mode it has is to connect to a friend who is simultaneously playing the game; that will never have happened. Anyway, during my brief play I watched the most stilted and awkward cutscene ever made.

EyeToy: Play (PS2)

Accompanying the cleaning suds game with "When I'm Cleaning Windows" was a work of genius.

With the news that a 3D version of Outrun is on the way to the 3DS, I remembered that I bought a PS2 disc a while ago which has the Sega Ages versions of a few games, including Outrun, on it. I decided to give it a go on the PS3.

It's still great fun, but it seems really hard compared to any version of Outrun I've played before. I only managed to get to the end of the third stage, even after increasing the time limits available. I wasn't even crashing or spinning out more than once before running out of time.

I can't think which other versions of Outrun I have. maybe I'll have to find an arcade in Shenmue II.